


Red

by betweenthepages



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Episode Tag, Gen, T.R.A.C.K.S
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 17:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthepages/pseuds/betweenthepages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of 1x13, Melinda May does what needs to be done. When she's sitting alone in the cockpit at last, though, she finds herself longing for the company of one Natasha Romanoff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> So, this turned out far angst-ier and darker than I intended - I apologize! I've been pretty intrigued by how May might see Romanoff, lately, so this is a bit of an experiment.

In the aftermath, Melinda May does what needs to be done. 

She sets the course of the plane for the nearest city, liaising with ground operations to have an ambulance waiting. She wraps Ward's hands quickly and gently and lets him go, knowing there is nothing more she can do for him, not tonight. She wipes down the Night-Night guns and stores them for Fitz, making sure everything in the lab is secured for landing. 

She extracts a heartbroken Simmons from Fitz's arms, leads her to a sink, washes away Skye's blood. She gets Phil out of his bloodstained suit, pressing her hand to his scar to reassure herself that people have survived worse. Tonight that brings no comfort. 

When she finally, mercifully gets the solitude she's been longing for all day in the cockpit, preparing the plane for touchdown, she finds herself longing for the company of someone else.

She'd met Natasha Romanoff just when she was starting to make a name for herself in SHIELD, when she was just starting to admit to herself how good she was, how lethal. The first time May taken out eight operatives unarmed had been exhilarating, the look on Nick Fury's face even more so; the second time it had been ten and the rumors began swirling through SHIELD of her talents. When it was twelve and she and the hostage are the last ones standing, a textbook perfect mission, the fear begins to creep through her. She was good at this. Almost too good.

The first time she spars with Romanoff, it is in the dead of the night. May's moves are coolly competent and Natasha's warmth and butter when they spar, but they meet each other blow for blow, eyes never leaving the others'. She could see Natasha analyzing her moves, reading the history in them, eyes widening in appreciation when May almost pins her. No doubt calculated - May had been distracted enough for the split-second after that Natasha had managed to flip her - but she sensed that the respect was real. When Natasha pinned her hands and she gave, a little bit of hope sprung in her heart.

Finally, Melinda had mused, somewhat selfishly. Someone she couldn't hurt.

Natasha walked ahead of her to the locker room, tugging off her tank top and sports bra, giving Melinda a full view of the scars that were written across her back. Not infallible, then, she thought, reveling in the silence of the room as they both changed. She sensed Natasha's eyes tracing her own scars and felt the odd sensation that the other woman was constructing an entire folio on her based on her moves and scars alone; filing away the bullet scar on her right hip and the angle of her roundhouse kick for reference.

In the weeks and years that come, Melinda builds a file of her own in her head, memorizing the precise physics of Natasha's thigh maneuver and the length of the scar on her left arm. It was an oddly intimate way to get to know someone, but with Tasha, it had felt right.

Years later May realizes how off her initial reaction to Tasha was. It wasn't that she couldn't hurt Tasha, or Tasha couldn't hurt her, knowing all they did about each other. It was all in the potential -- they could have destroyed each other, and chose not to. In their lives at that point it seemed like one of the few choices they had.

Two of the world's most lethal women, and they'd become... friends. 

There was Phil, of course -- there always was Phil, but he never quite came to understand what the "whatever it takes" parameters on her extractions meant to her specifically. They were both lethal, yes, but her abilities bordered on being supernaturally so, and when it came down to it, it was her that took down as many people as it took. 

Wiping Skye's blood from Jemma's hands had reminded her of all the times she'd had his blood on her hands, hoping against all hope that this would not be the one wound that killed him. Later, she'd wiped his blood off Natasha's hands, part relief it was no longer her, part guilt that she had put the burden on someone else. Still, there's no one she'd trust more with Phil's back than Natasha and Clint. 

She's not sure which one of them is more surprised that when Phil's death finally came, it was not either her or Natasha with his blood on their hands, willing him to stay alive. She doesn't know whether it's for better or for worse that when Phil begs to die neither her or Tasha had been there to allow him the mercy he so deserved.

Somehow between the scars and the sparring and Clint and Phil, Natasha became the one person who got it. 

Some days, when Ward looks at her like she'd hung the moon and lit it, when he worships the very ground the Cavalry walked on, she wonders how Natasha is coping with the world heralding the Black Widow as a hero. It's not false modesty - they are indeed extraordinary, and only they know that it is both blessing and curse.

It's the red in their ledgers. It's the things they see everyday.

She and Tasha both know that there is no honor in this business, no greater good in a world that allows people like them to live and innocents like Skye to hang in the balance. 

It's simply what they do. Make the hard calls, do the right things, so that other people don't. Throw themselves into the midst of combat so that the scientist who isn't even cleared for the field doesn't have to throw herself in front of a grenade. Allow strangers' hands to touch their bodies rather than allow the twenty-four year old to be shot slowly, intimately. Be torn between wanting to praise their bravery and wanting to shake it into their heads that they do this so people like Skye and Jemma don't have to.

Because for every family that lives, every mother that returns home, every person they return to another's embrace, there's another life they end in the name of keeping this world safe. Keeping people blissfully unaware of the horrors out there.

Their jobs were very different, in a way, yet very alike. The Black Widow was sent in to extract information, get under their skin, raise hell. The Cavalry was sent in when everything had already gone to hell, to get people out. But what people forgot was that getting someone out of hell often meant putting someone else there as well.

And when the line blurs, there is absolutely nothing heroic about what she and Natasha do. May had believed in playing the hero once, thought that she was doing what was right in the name of the greater good. SHIELD took her, honed her into a finely tuned weapon; took pride in how lethal she'd become. Sent her out into the world to fight evil, once, and now to fight monsters and magic.

Like Natasha said, this world was nothing they were ever trained for.

There's nothing heroic about what she'd had to do in Bahrain. She preferred close combat over guns, part pride, part reminder that she was still taking lives. What she wouldn't have done for a gun that day, though, standing in a warehouse covered in blood, knowing her own hands had taken twenty lives in exchange for three. She and Natasha both know how quickly the line between mercy and vengeance blurs. Bahrain was the first time her job felt like exacting vengeance rather than ensuring mercy. It wasn't the last.

Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose. The world keeps turning.

The black in their ledger piles up, never enough to outweigh the red.

May had embraced the idea of do no harm, choosing a desk job as penitence. 

And yet the world had stuck them with teams they'd never wanted, and here they were. Natasha with a team of superheroes, her with a planeful of innocents. Bar Phil, none of them understand yet the price they will pay for what they do, a price that went far beyond missing the PTA meetings and white picket fences. She thinks of Jemma, likely still standing guard over Skye's still body, and feels suddenly, devastatingly sorry that her first few lessons have been so harsh.

Until Coulson was taken, until Skye was shot, this team had almost felt like redemption. 

May scoffs at herself, hands tightening on the yoke. Natasha wouldn't be quite as maudlin about it all. She'd already accepted them for what they were: human weapons, sent out into the world to fight battles so that no one else would have to. There's already so much red, so much pain, whatever more comes next may well be insignificant.

Natasha must know, she thinks, if not through SHIELD then through Stark, that Melinda was back in the field. Tonight more so than ever, she wishes she could call. She can't quite bring herself to.

But she knows Natasha would've understood. In the dark of the night, Melinda finds comfort in this small blessing. 

She wonders if that alone is more than she deserves.


End file.
